F-16 Multirole Fighter & MiG-29 Fulcrum
- January 01, 2000 00:00 AM PST
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NovaLogic has a long-standing reputation for building relaxed realism combat sims that offer some of the best eye candy in the business. Titles like Comanche 3 and F-22 Raptor were unapologetically designed for casual flight sim fans who have no desire to memorize a 300-page manual before they take to the skies and blow the crap out of enemy targets from the land of Ay Eye.
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This approach may not have endeared them to hard core simmers but casual gamers have embraced the concept and rewarded NovaLogic with some impressive sales figures. The company's latest pair of games - F-16 Multirole Fighter and MiG-29 Fulcrum - continue the "sim-lite" tradition but this time around both titles offer some concessions intended to provide a greater level of appeal to the serious digital pilot. Or at least that's what NovaLogic claim.
Offered as stand-alone products, the similarities between the two titles are so pronounced that we've decided to review them together as though they were one game. In essence, the only differences between them are their individual flight models, avionics and mission/campaign selections. Sharing the same graphics engine, menu interface and keyboard layout, you could easily jump into the MiG-29 and fly it without so much as a glance at the manual if you're already up to speed on F-16. For a limited time you can even buy both games bundled together for the price of one in a special introductory offer from NovaLogic.
The flight model in F-16 Multirole Fighter was developed with the assistance of Lockheed Martin chief test pilot John Fergione while former MiG-29 test pilot and cosmonaut Yuri Prikhodko helped NovaLogic tweak the flight characteristics and avionics in MiG-29 Fulcrum. In the real world these planes serve distinctly different roles. The F-16 is a fly-by-wire single-engine ground attack fighter while the MiG is a twin-engine air superiority interceptor so it falls upon the programmers to recreate the different performance characteristics associated with each aircraft. In some respects they've manage to succeed, specifically with regards to the F-16's greater high speed maneuverability and the MiG's acknowledged low speed performance advantage. As indicated earlier, NovaLogic have also injected greater realism into the flight models of both products than was evident in their earlier games by incorporating factors such as flat spins, weight/drag effects, G-bleeding, fuel flow and altitude limitations.
Unfortunately these enhancements aren't likely to impress serious simmers one bit because the flight models in both F-16 and MiG-29 are quite elementary in just about every other respect. The planes can accelerate from zero to supersonic in less time than it took me to type this sentence, gear and flaps can be extended at high speed without damage and neither aircraft seems to understand what a stall is. I was able to drop both of them onto the runway at speeds that wouldn't keep an ultralight afloat as well as at velocities and sink rates that would rip the gear off of a Navy carrier plane. Landings in F-16 or MiG-29 are about as challenging as dropping a potato into a sack.
Perhaps in some inexplicable attempt to compensate for the user-friendly flight and landing model (my theory anyway), NovaLogic has cranked up the difficulty level with both titles in a completely unrelated area. Inbound missiles that target your plane, whether of the SAM or AAM variety, will eventually find their way through any countermeasures you can throw at them and hit you. The first one will take out your radar or some other key component and the second will kill you. There is no missile padlock view and the Threat Warning Indicator is all but useless. You can pop as many chaff and flares as you want (the planes auto-release them anyway) and pull as many hard breaking turns as you want, but it's still a lost cause. After several dozen missions with F-16 and MiG-29 my personal success rate at spoofing these missiles remains at a perfect zero percent. This is a inexcusable flaw and it severely undermines the otherwise entertaining play value of both games.
Much of that play value revolves around the extensive campaign action and the even more impressive multiplayer options found in each title. In addition to a well crafted set of training and instant action missions, F-16 offers no less than five individual campaigns to work through in single-player mode. These take place in Serbia, Liberia/Sierra Leone, the Congo, Burma and Somalia/Ethiopia (and must be played out in that order). The MiG-29 format is similar except that the Serbian, Liberian and Congolese campaigns are replaced by conflicts in Uganda, Tajikistan and the Kurile Islands. Each of these campaigns is made up of several pre-scripted missions that must be successfully completed before the next available sortie can be flown. (That sound you hear is me smacking my forehead repeatedly - I've always detested that "keep doing it until you get it right" format).
If pre-scripted campaign action isn't your cup of JP-3 then both F-16 and MiG-29 also offer some of the most intense multiplayer action to be found in a jet combat sim. Apart from the standard serial/modem, network and Internet connections, both titles can also be linked up to NovaWorld's dedicated IBS (Integrated Battle Space) server, which can support up to 128 online players simultaneously. Head-to-head and cooperative play with either game (or an upgraded version of NovaLogic's earlier F-22) can be selected and the service offers one of the smoothest connections I've ever experienced in an Internet multiplayer environment. More importantly, it's completely free!
Another shining feature with F-16 and MiG-29 is each sim's superb aircraft and terrain graphics. Although fans have come to expect top notch eye candy from NovaLogic, the Voodoo-enhanced visuals in both of these titles are still some of the best I've ever seen in a flight sim. The individual aircraft display such highly detailed textures and light-sourcing effects that it was sometimes hard to believe I wasn't watching an episode of "Wings" on TV. The pannable virtual cockpit views in both the F-16 and the MiG are extremely sharp and detailed and each boasts some remarkable effects such as interior canopy reflections as well as functional gauges and displays that continue to update. The scenery, which uses some very convincing repeating texture backdrops, is almost as impressive and extremely pleasant to fly over. Gamers without 3D accelerator cards will be pleased to know that the game is almost as good (and surprisingly fast) in software mode.
If not for their poor missile avoidance programming and overly structured campaign gameplay, F-16 Multirole Fighter and MiG-29 Fulcrum could have shot straight to the top of the charts as two of the finest relaxed realism combat sims available today. The graphics alone represent a tremendous leap forward in computer gaming and can be enjoyed equally by players with or without 3d acceleration. My issues with both games inevitably comes back to those damn missiles. I can deal with simple, but I have a major problem with suicidal.
